


Undertow

by rjn



Category: Baywatch (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23554258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Craig left thirty-six hours ago for his seminar in New York . So why is Eddie looking through a telephoto lens at Craig on the beach right now? It's supposed to be his leg that's broken, not his eyes.
Relationships: Eddie Kramer/Craig Pomeroy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unjustifiable, really. It's Rear Window but set in the universe from my last weird Baywatch story.

Cort had been on the beach when he got hurt. That’s the part that Craig doesn’t understand at first. For Cort to stand by and let something happen to Eddie is unthinkable. Craig knows this. _Over my dead body_ is just the kind of friendship they have, or maybe _over the dead body of whoever tries to hurt Eddie._ All Craig knows is that bodies would hit the ground before Cort would let any harm befall his best friend Eddie.

And so Craig doesn’t understand what happened when he gets the call from Baywatch. It’s not someone who knows him on the phone. It’s been a time since Craig’s done any lifeguarding, and not many of his era remain down at headquarters. The voice on the other end of the phone is young and male, and not reassuring in the least.

Craig tries to keep the panic at bay by reasoning through what little information he has. It was supposed to be a day off for Eddie, but Vanessa had an audition come up, and she was one of Eddie’s favorites, and Eddie had offered to sit half her shift for her. Cort got wind of this and had made plans to meet Eddie at the hand-over so they could work out. Ostensibly because he and Eddie work out together most days Eddie has off, and more precisely, because Cort wanted to flex shirtless in front of Vanessa. Craig wasn’t sure if it was because Cort wants Vanessa as a client or because Cort just plain wants Vanessa. Either way, Cort had been there, and Eddie was working, or maybe working out by then, and something had happened, and Eddie got hurt.

_An accident,_ the kid on the phone had said, before assuring Craig that it would all be okay, because Eddie’s such a tough guy, like that would be news to Craig, who had personally watched Eddie conquer impossible odds on dozens of occasions over the last decade. It’s not until Craig’s stuck in traffic, halfway to the hospital, that Cort gets through to him, and he gets the whole story.

“It’s not bad.” Cort says. “He’ll be fine.”

And Craig takes his first deep breath in ages and asks the thing that’s been bothering him.

“Then why isn’t Eddie on the phone right now?”

“He’s in surgery.”

Craig starts to spin out, _Lawbot: logic does not compute,_ and Cort rushes to elaborate.

“It’s just the leg, just a bad break. The orthopedic guy happened to have a cancellation, or Eddie would be scheduled for it tomorrow or the next day, and you’d be listening to his drugged-up nonsense right now. It’s _good news_ that he’s in surgery already.”

“Well, in that case,” says Craig. “ _Great.”_

Cort just laughs in the face of Craig’s worried sarcasm. He sketches out the situation, mostly to keep Craig’s overactive brain from veering out of control again while he’s driving. The story involves a pair of jerks on jet skis, an injured swimmer. Vanessa stabilized the swimmer, Eddie had put himself between her and the jet skis, an extra safety buffer while she worked. It had looked like a done deal, a successful save, and Cort hadn’t wanted to throw a half-blind guy into the chaos for no reason.

“Van is a good lifeguard. With Eddie around, it was overkill.”

At first, the guys on jet skis didn’t leave the scene of the crime. They’d powered down and were watching Vanessa, even. Cort figured Eddie had been downplaying things to them, or maybe not even speaking to them at all, just staying between them and the beach full of swimmers, mentally taking down a detailed description in case they changed their minds and fled before the cops showed up.

“So, what happened?”

“The scarab showed up. Lights and sirens and the whole nine yards, even though Van already had support on the beach. I was helping her out, so I didn’t really see it, but I heard the engines fire up. The guys must have spooked-”

_“He got hit by the jet skis??”_

Craig’s voice goes so shrill and loud, the woman in the next lane looks over in alarm.

“No, Pomeroy. Jesus. No.”

Cort’s voice is calm. Craig swallows down his panic again, waves apologetically at the woman in the other car.

“The first one missed him completely…” continues Cort.


	2. Chapter 2

Craig hates hospitals and I hate being the reason he’s in one. On the other hand, I am really glad that he’s here.

I’m actually pretty good with pain now. I’ve broken bones before. Not this bad, but still, I can handle pain. It’s the fogginess that I can’t stand. The drug-induced floating. I come from the kind of background… You need to keep your wits, I guess, is the thing? And I’m no genius at the best of times. Craig, though, has a brain on him. Which used to make him annoying, I thought, but now it’s, like, the seventeenth best thing about him on my list. Maybe eighteenth after today, because he can make Cort go away with just a look. And Cort was starting to really get on my nerves. But then they went to do an operation and I woke up and it’s just Craig here and Cort can go suck eggs. Cort’s brain is good too, but he uses his for evil. That can be fun, but I get kind of nervous, with the drugs and the haze, and Craig is just… good. He’s just really good.

Proof that Craig is good: He is petting my hair and it feels nice. Craig has blue eyes like the ocean, which is pretty high on my list, maybe fourth or fifth most of the time. And he’s looking at me while he pets my hair, and he’s handsome. I go to tell him that, but my mouth is dry and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and then Craig has water and a straw. His brain has dropped right down to nineteen or twenty on the best things list now, behind ‘has water’. But I won’t tell him that, because Craig probably would want his brain to be number one thing people admire, and not his heart, which is a sentimental and mushy thing to think is number one, but I’m the authority on all things Craig and it’s my list.

“Hi,” I say.

I meant to say something else, but I forgot it. Water is awesome, by the way.

“Hi,” says Craig and he smiles at me.

Craig is a pretty smiley guy, way more smiley than me. (Third or fifteenth thing, FYI, depending on if he’s laughing at me or not when he does the smiling.) But he must be really happy to say hello to me, because he is smiling in a hospital and Craig hates hospitals.

“I hurt my leg,” I tell him, so that he knows why I’m not smiling back.

“I know. They fixed it, though.”

“Okay, good.”

I try to get a look at where they fixed my leg, but there’s not much to see, just a blanket. My arm has a cast on it, I can see that one, and there’s one of the blue files from Craig’s office on the blanket beside it. He’s been lawyering while I was sleeping. Sneaky. No work in bed is the rule. But if it kept his mind off being in a hospital, then it’s good, because Craig hates hospitals.

~

“I bet you don’t mind that I’m a small guy right about now.”

Craig props me up against the wall on the landing. I’m basically furniture, now, but less useful. He jogs back down the first half of the stairs and gets the wheelchair and runs it up to the landing. He sets it beside me. The chair doesn’t need the wall to prop itself up while we get ready for the next stage, so I am definitely less useful than furniture.

“I have never minded your size,” says Craig.

It’s a weird thing to say, but he’s pretty distracted, looking at the second half of the stairs. This stairwell is private, and only goes between Craig’s office and our apartment, so it’s pretty narrow. When we moved in, the movers had to crane the bed and the living room furniture up to the terrace and go through the sliding doors. I remind Craig about it and he laughs.

“Yeah, well, the hourly rate on that crane was astronomical, so you’re stuck with me and the stairs.”

Craig is looking at the door at the top. It closes automatically, and I know what he’s thinking. He’s going to have to prop it open to get everything inside. The question is, will he prop it open with the wheelchair, or with me?

Impressively, neither.

Craig had brought me clothes to wear home from the hospital; shorts that fit over my cast, a t-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt with a zip. My right arm is in a cast and sling, and despite the scowl that was probably on my face, Craig had briefly smiled to himself, zipping me into the sweatshirt and putting the end of the empty sleeve into the pocket like a ghost hand was keeping itself warm. Craig also brought me a pair of shoes, which shows how little sleep he’s had the last few days, or he would have just brought a left. My right foot is strapped into the whole elaborate leg cast situation. My unnecessary right shoe wound up shoved toe-deep into Craig’s back pocket to bring home and, it turns out, it makes a great doorstop.

“I’m so sorry about all of this,” I say.

Craig doesn’t want to hear it, but I am feeling pretty bad about things. Missing work, and making Craig miss his work, and being a generally huge inconvenience. I want to make the most of the time off, at least, and spend quality time with Craig, but he says I look exhausted and helps me to bed. I don’t think I am exhausted, and I tell him that, and he nods along even as he arranges pillows around me and dials the lights down. Turns out he’s right. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

~

I end up being slightly better off than furniture. By the second day, I can get myself to the bathroom, the fridge, and roll myself between the terrace and my TV (I say _my_ TV because Craig didn’t own a TV until I came along, because Craig is a dweeb and mostly only uses the remote control to mark his place in his books, which I feel is deeply disrespectful to television, when you think of how many books’ worth of stories the remote can call up if you don’t relegate it to a paperweight.) The problem is the terrace and the living room floor are also the ceiling for Craig’s office downstairs and every time he hears me move around, he comes to check on me. Without fail, after the thirty minutes of maneuvering it takes me to use the toilet on my own, I come out of the bathroom to an audience of Craig, waiting anxiously. It creeps me out. I’m kind of a private guy (and stubborn as hell according to my ex) when it comes to everyone but Craig, and even with him, there are limits. By day three, he’s been shouted at enough to agree to a daily two check-in limit.

“Ta-da,” I say when I roll into the living room on day four. “Piss King. Didn’t fall in.”

The beautiful blonde woman sitting on the couch laughs at me. Vanessa Weller is supernaturally pretty, and sweet, and very young, and reminds me so much of Shauni when we were that age that she freaks me out a little, when I see her by a glance at work. She is the daughter of a big deal movie producer guy who is currently in prison for rich person crimes. He’s in the kind of prison with horseback riding and a driving range, Craig told me, so Vanessa’s dad is probably in a better situation than I am for the time being. It’s probably a tie when it comes to being left relatively unsupervised to use the bathroom.

“Hi, Van. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. And congrats on your success, Piss King.”

I have visions of my new nickname taking off at headquarters.

“That doesn’t need to leave this apartment.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m your boss,” I say.

I’m widely considered an even softer touch than Mitch was with the personnel, so I find myself repeating those words fairly often. Hard to say if it the reminder is for their benefit or my own.

“And it’s an honor to work for you, your Royal Highness.”

_“Van…”_

“Anyway, I just came by to check in. Craig said to come right up.”

“I bet he did.”

“You look good, E. Both feet facing the right way and everything. How do you feel?”

“I’m doing okay.”

One light eyebrow cinches up skeptically, then Vanessa proves even more why she’s my favorite, when she produces a fancy DVD player and a box full of DVDs. I offer to reimburse her for them, and by that, I mean Craig will reimburse her, but she says it’s no big deal. Even when he’s in prison, Van says, her dad gets free promotional stuff like this sent to him constantly. When she leaves, I make her promise to tell Craig that her visit counts as a check-in. He probably thought he was sneaky, sending her as emissary.

By the time Cort stops by, I am napping in front of my second martial arts-based action flick. He’s a little bit annoyed he missed Vanessa, and he says so, then he flips through my new movie collection to see if there’s anything worth borrowing. Borrowing, the way Cort goes about it, is what us non-criminal majority would call stealing.

“You’re supposed to be visiting me,” I tell him.

Cort looks at me.

“You’re drowsy and in a bad mood. Vanessa is a sunbeam and smells like heaven.”

“Nobody’s forcing you to be here.”

“Ah, but somebody is.”

That’s when I remember Craig is leaving me. For several days, at least. Lately he’s been a lawyer for petty criminals far more than he’s comfortable. In an effort to pivot into something else, Craig has been taking a series of courses about Environmental Law, which sounds like a lot less fun than petty criminals, but admittedly seems to suit him better. Craig spends more time in the ocean than most current lifeguards I know, and he wants to protect his second home. With lawyering, however that works.

The courses are at Columbia; Craig is leaving me for his ex-wife.

At least that’s how I put it when I want to guilt trip him. Gina and her husband moved to New York six months ago, and he stays in their spare bedroom when he goes out that way. Rent is paid by Craig in legal advice for some copyright thing, but Gina’s husband just paints triangles, so I don’t know who he’s suing, yield signs, or pyramids, or the makers of Doritos or something. And anyways, I’m jealous of Craig getting to hang out with Gina, but he is nice enough at least to lie and say she never cooks when he’s there.

Cort is staring at me like I’ve been sitting here drowsy and cranky for too long without saying anything.

“The seminar trip. You’re here to babysit me.”

“Just here to get the instructions for care and feeding of Craig’s pet for now.” Cort pats me on the head. “Don’t worry. I’ll ditch you the minute his flight takes off tomorrow.”

“I heard that.”

Craig is standing in the doorway, dressed for work the way only Craig dresses for practicing law, which is a shirt and tie with jeans and flip flops. He’s a dork, but he’s a beach dork.

The beach dork points in my direction.

“And before you start, this is not a check-in. I’m done for the day.”

I shrug my good arm at him.

“Show me the stuff and I’ll get out of your hair,” Cort says. “I don’t know how you two are getting filthy these days, but I’m sure you need all the time you can get.”

Craig scowls at him, but I think he makes a great point. Craig is going to be gone for a while and we haven’t even so much as made out since I went and broke myself. I have no idea how to make it work, but my skin is crawling from the withdrawal. The painkillers are bonerkillers more than anything, and the sick kind of floaty feeling is growing tiresome. Craig can at least go down to the beach and get a swim if he needs to blow off extra steam. And boy do I not want to think about how far away that is, either. Weeks left with the arm cast, and the possibility they’ll put something more substantial on my leg after the surgical wounds heal. I won’t be back in the water for ages. Just thinking about it makes me panicky, and Craig can tell. He grabs my good shoulder at the neck and kneads the muscles there.

“Okay?” he says.

I nod, doing the Pomeroy-Kramer method of breathing meditation, a method we’ve adapted to last for the exact amount of time that Craig or I can sit still and do breathing meditation. Some people, less enlightened in attention deficit mindfulness, might call it one deep breath.

Craig shows Cort around the designated ‘Narcotics Drawer’ in the kitchen. The painkillers, the antibiotics, the sleeping pills, but also the detailed schedule and the notes Craig has been taking, like I’m an eighth-grade science fair project and he’s running away with first place.

“These ones kill his appetite even more than the rest, so they’re for before bed. Oh, and there’s protein shakes premixed in the fridge if you can get him to drink one…”

He’s nervous to be leaving, I can tell, and Craig’s way of handling stress is over-preparedness, so I am sympathetic. But at the same time, I feel like a particularly difficult case of his, a problem client, and it’s frustrating.

“ _He’s_ sitting right here and he’s been through the routine a few times, if you want to talk to him directly.”

Cort smirks a bit at that. He always seems to enjoy Craig and I sniping at one another.

“Now that I’ve seen your stash, I’m more sure than ever you shouldn’t be left alone,” he says in defence of Craig’s anal retentive overprotectiveness.

Craig puts himself between Cort and the drawer, pushing it closed behind him. I can tell he’s rethinking his decision to go to his seminar. He’s looking me over with the worried kind of scrunch to his eyes, so I try to smile reassuringly. Craig smiles back. When Cort leaves, he offers to move the TV into the bedroom for me.

“I can think of better things to do, if we’re going to bed early.”

“You really think you’re up for…”

Craig gestures broadly between us. It makes me laugh for some reason. I remember one time Mitch was prying so hard about us that Craig, thoroughly rattled, had used the phrase _sexual congress._ I teased him about it for a solid week, until he threatened to prohibit _sexual congress_ if I didn’t cut it out.

“I’m sure we can manage something. Please? I’m losing my mind here.”

He stares a long look at me. There’s mild concern there, but also a hint of the exact kind of longing that I can leverage, and mostly the easy warmth that he’s looked at me with since the day we met.

And that’s a cool story, too. I ruled my rookie tryouts, full twenty seconds ahead of the second guy in the water course, and while I stood there dripping and catching my breath, I overheard Craig tell Mitch, admiringly: _that kid doesn’t fuck around_. I knew right then that I was going to spend most of my rookie season always trying to be taken that seriously by that guy Pomeroy, because nothing had ever made me feel so validated in my whole life up to that point. Craig claims he doesn’t remember saying that and that he doesn’t curse like that anyways, but Mitch assured me it happened exactly how I remembered, and also that Craig unknowingly swears a lot when it comes to me.

‘Cause Craig thinks I’m aces. He always kind of has. I give him a pervy eyebrow waggle and he laughs.

Later, when I’m half asleep and Craig is supposed to be packing for his trip, he’s laughing again at some weird joke I made. I can’t move, with pillows arranged to suit my new plaster and plastic bits, like being packed in custom Styrofoam. It’s the kind of thing that would normally set off alarm bells for me, being stuck like that, but Craig’s body also holds me there and that makes it okay. He’s telling me about other times I’ve made dumb jokes in the midst of bad situations, and how he loves that about me. We have always had that thing where the shit hits the fan and we can share a look or crack a joke and know everything will turn out okay for us as long as we’re in it together. _Bienvenido a Mexico_ in a falsely cheerful tone is one of those jokes that we’ve kept going for years as a sort of password between us for a circus of disasters.

I think of all the things Craig went through with cancer and his divorce and finding himself alone and miserable and far from the beach, and I’m not sure that I could have helped any of that with a dumb joke, but I would have liked to have tried.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I guess this is still happening?

The lack of respect is astounding. Craig’s out of town one day, and Cort is already trying to get into the shower with me.

“I’m not thrilled about this either,” says Cort. “But what kind of friend doesn’t hose you down when you’re unable to fight back?”

That he says it so plainly doesn’t help things. I’m extremely uncomfortable with him crowding me into the bathroom and standing between me and the door.

“I’m just saying I don’t need your help. I have the thing to sit on and the showerhead comes off the thing, and… wait. Cort, why are _you_ getting naked??”

“These are my best jeans. I don’t want to get them soaked.”

“Those are your only jeans.”

“All the more reason.”

He smiles that smirky look that used to be attractive to me before I’d ever seen him do the dead-eyes version of it that meant violence was nigh. Now I’m wary.

“Just stop touching me!”

I don’t mean to lose my temper, but it works. Cort backs off and sits himself on the edge of the sink and holds up his hands, makes one more shot at reasoning out why I should get into the shower with my casts and my plastic bags and him.

“I’m watching you wobble on dry ground,” he says in the bored drawl that I know is the exact opposite of my shrill rasp. “I honestly think you’ll need the help on wet tile. And you don’t want Craig seeing you like this, so let’s just get you cleaned up while I’m here. It’ll be over before you know it.”

My first attempts at personal hygiene with one leg and one arm out of commission were clumsy, I admit. And I know I scared the crap out of Craig with a loud crash the morning I tried to sneak in some form of a shower while he was on a conference call downstairs. But it’s clear now that he put Cort up to this, which is kind of… _bullshit._

A dozen years before Craig and me were anything, I messed around with Cort a bit. That’s it. I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t regret it. Nothing that I have with Craig now could have existed back then anyhow. We had to go through the intervening years apart in order to get to here, right?

But Craig will always be heartbroken about his ‘lost’ time and he’ll go miles out of his way to keep any kind of heartbreak from touching me. There are things Craig doesn’t talk about and entire shark-infested regions of our history he won’t wade into. Because he wants to spare me even the smallest amount of unease.

But why can’t he let me do this for him? He goes putting Cort into a shower with me like it’s no big deal when that was the _exact point_ where things fractured, and where our roads diverged in the first place. Me and Cort being stupid in the shower at work and Craig started to feel some cracks in his foundation and I started to resent him for seeing me as some kind of helpless, needy… well, okay, orphan. So I can bear some of the responsibility too, for anything we missed out on. IF we missed out on anything. Besides, not everything has to be about regrets and personal growth and forgiveness and… Forget it. The introspection thing is Craig’s deal, not mine. It’s easier to just throw your cards on the table, right? And I have, _allegedly,_ the world’s worst poker face anyhow, so here goes. It boils down to this:

_Would it have killed the guy to act a bit more jealous?!_

I mean, it’s great he trusts me, and I’ve probably aged out of Cort’s dating pool, but, you know. Kind of hurts the feelings. And his distrust of Cort is already legendary. Some possessiveness would not be out of line!

“Earth to Eddie,” says Cort.

“No,” I say. “Get out. No.”

Cort opens his mouth, but I say it again. It’s best to be direct with Cort. He’s the kind of guy who can find the slightest hint of an angle and get his way.

The simple but firm _no_ works, and he leaves me alone for the most part, though I shower with the bathroom door ajar in case of a slip and fall emergency and it takes me _forever_ to get myself out of my trash bag couture after.

“Thank God,” he says when I emerge, cranky and dripping, like a cat caught in a rainstorm. “You were getting ripe.”

“Shut up, Cort.”

It’s interesting that he doesn’t offer to lend a hand when I’m shifting my _fully-clothed_ self from the chair to the sofa, but I catch a glimpse of his profile and there’s at least a frown of concern there.

Cort’s got his long lens camera out on the terrace so he can watch the beach and once I’m settled in the living room, he gestures towards the tripod through the open glass doors. He has his eye on some woman who walks by our place to get to the beach and he’s trying to “spontaneously” catch up with her on her way for her daily swim. Yes, John D. Cort is a creep, but I also know he likes an excuse to look at things really far away through a limited viewfinder, like a camera or binoculars, because then it’s as if his eyes work perfectly fine, when he can fit the whole beach within his range. It’s a little bit brilliant, for a Cort thing.

“You mind if I leave this rig like this? A new beach yoga class starts up tomorrow morning.”

“Why wouldn’t you go over and see it in person?”

Cort slaps me on the back, sending a jolt down my broken arm.

“A Navy SEAL never goes in on a mission without doing recon first.”

~

Cort’s gone by the time Craig calls.

“How are you feeling? Did you get some sleep?”

Craig had phoned last night when he got into New York, but his flight had been delayed and it was late, and he’d felt awful for waking me up. The truth is, I don’t sleep all that great when he is away anyhow, and with the all-over achy feeling that comes from lugging around two useless limbs, sleep had been a bit of a nonstarter. But I don’t mind lying to Craig for his conscience’s sake.

“I’m good. I slept fine. Slept in a bit. How are you?”

He’d been frazzled on the phone the previous night. Now he sounds tired, and maybe a bit off.

“I’m okay. You have Cort there, right? Cort showed up?”

“He’s gone now, but yeah, he was here. We made out on the couch and took a shower together.”

“He’s gone? Wait. What?”

I feel bad laughing at Craig’s vocal doubletake because he really does sound exhausted.

“Oh,” he says. “Funny.”

“He’s coming back later with a pizza.”

“He knows to lock up the doors, right? You can’t get downstairs to check. He needs to remember the lock himself. I left him a set of keys. If he loses the keys, then…”

“Craig.”

“Hm?”

“Everything is fine here.”

“I just… I miss you. And I worry. You know.”

It’s a little too familiar, the strain in his voice and his distracted tone. The phone call to the dispatch office in Melbourne. His life not following the right trajectory, the miles between us too much for me to span with words. Something’s wrong over there. I need my East Coast correspondent.

“Is Gina around? Let me say hi.”

“No, I got in so late, and I didn’t want to bother them. I got a hotel room. I haven’t been to Gina’s place yet.”

Craig stammers when he’s not focused, but not so bad that anybody but me would notice. It’s a lawyer trick. He can keep one conversation going and be working out a completely different problem in his head at the same time. I hate when he pulls a lawyer trick on me.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Eddie, I gotta get going to my next session. Please, if you need anything, call Mitch or Cort. And just look after yourself, please? I’ll try and call tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

But he doesn’t. And between the sleeplessness and the limited range and the pain and the boredom, I resent it pretty majorly.

~

When the sun comes up after the second night with Craig away, I am sleepy and low-lidded on the couch. I didn’t sleep much, but I also didn’t have the energy to do a hoist and roll to get over to the bedroom. Instead I watched more of the movies Van left until the red of the sun started to bleed into the room. Sailors take warning.

I move to the wheelchair and lever myself over. Work my way to the kitchen and get my good hand over the edge of the sink to pull myself up. One-handed coffee takes twice as long to start, but the first drips into the pot are quick and the smell revives me.

The chair doesn’t have a cup holder, so I let the coffee cool before I make my way onto the terrace.

There’s a commotion in the stairwell that I can hear from the open door, across the length of the living room. Cort, for all his athleticism and grace in the water, sometimes sounds like he’s falling up the stairs. For once, it’s not even a warning in case we’re getting up to something on the living room couch, because Craig is not even home.

“’Morning, Eddie. Don’t’ get up,” he jokes as he steps into the apartment. He makes for the kitchen and makes a surprised happy sound to see that the coffee’s been made. I hear the ‘Medication Station’ drawer open.

“Have you had your… yep, nevermind.”

Cort steps onto the terrace and lifts his coffee mug in salute.

“What time does yoga start?” I ask him. He ignores me.

“What do you feel like for breakfast?”

I ignore him back and take a closer look at his camera set-up. The tripod height is set conveniently for Cort in a patio chair, or me with my wheels. The sun feels good on my shoulders and the beach looks serene at the early hour, so I take a look. It’s something to do, a change from being cooped up inside with the TV. Maybe the yoga class will inspire me to get started on the stretching routine I’m supposed to practice leading up to physical therapy.

Cort’s sightline is set for the sand. There’s hardly any activity for what is usually a busy stretch of beach not far from the boardwalk. I move the camera gently with my good arm and take in more scenery. There are hardly any cars on the boulevard where it turns into the parking surface. A topless Jeep with an (unfortunately) top-wearing woman, a conspicuous muscle car left parked in the no-stopping zone, and an inconspicuous beige sedan with two inconspicuous men sitting inconspicuously inside.

Ah, cops. They stand out so much more for attempting to blend in.

At the edge of my view, a third man approaches, walking in the direction of the probable cops. He does a horrible job looking nonchalant as he slows and comes to a stop at the passenger-side window of the beige sedan. He leans, one arm casually resting atop a short signpost, as if he’s just resting. His back is turned to the car, but he’s clearly speaking with the occupants. In a boring day on an uncharacteristically deserted stretch of beach, things were about to get interesting.

The third man is tall and slim and dressed too primly for the beach, but too casually for business. He has broad shoulders and sandy hair. Though it’s getting a bit long in the back as his work schedule and caring for his invalided boyfriend interfered with his last haircut appointment. And if he would turn around and face the apartment terrace instead of staring out at the beach while he talked to the two creepy undercover-looking weirdos, he would have devastatingly beautiful turquoise blue eyes. Far from New York City, and far from any boring law seminars, Craig turns enough for me to see his profile.

Standing right beside me, annoyingly close, Cort sense me tensing up.

“Cereal okay?” he says. “I make a great bowl of cereal.”

_“You lying bastard.”_

I click the shutter release and hope there’s film in the camera.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know, guys. Might be 9 chapters now? I lost the thread on this one for a bit. What even is this?

I have a splitting headache and Cort is talking. According to Craig, those two things are intrinsically related, but it’s not usually something I experience. I kind of like the sound of Cort’s smooth Texan thing, some of the time. I can understand the appeal, I mean.

Also, Craig is a liar, so there’s that.

Cort is working the zoom lens on the camera now, having physically rolled me off to the side like yesterday’s garbage before proceeding to talk his face off.

“I see nothing. No dweeb lawyers. No sedan, beige or otherwise. But, ooh, Jeep girl _is_ nice. Good eye, Eddie. Good eye.”

“Look about three spots _ahead_ of the Jeep,” I tell him.

Trust Cort to get distracted in the middle of this contender for biggest ever betrayal of my life (and for me, that’s saying something.) 

I’m more angry than confused for the moment, which is also saying something. Because what does he mean, no Craig, no car? It’s not like it’s that far away, just easier to see with the zoom lens.

I pull up to the railing and squint out. The spot where Craig had been standing is deserted.

“I definitely saw him,” I say. “I swear, I’m going to murder him.”

“Yeah, yeah, see beige spooks, murder Craig, sure thing. Hey, I’m going to go make sure the Corn Flakes aren’t burning,” says Cort.

He backs away from the camera, turns and retreats into the apartment.

I grab the camera again and direct it to the parking area. The exact spot and two spaces on either side. I check one last time. Empty. And where Craig had almost certainly been standing out there like a lying liar… _nothing._ No sign of him or his stupid blue flip flops. Goddammit.

I hear Cort rattling around in the kitchen. When I go inside, I catch him holding one of my pill bottles up to the light as if he’s counting the contents.

“I’m not stoned,” I tell him, but I am seriously starting to question myself.

I was so sure it was Craig. Just with all the detail, what he was wearing and the weird car beside him, seems like too much to have been mistaken. But then, my head is absolutely killing me. Maybe the strain on my neck from the night on the sofa is causing it or maybe it’s still the general aftereffects of the whole “catching a jetski with my face” thing. I close my eyes.

After a moment, I feel a hand on the back of my neck.

“Here, take this.”

Cort’s gentle voice is mildly unsettling. I’ve probably only heard it a half dozen times. Once when he was trying to get in my pants and the rest on occasions when he’d done something so heinous and/or reckless that I was sure I was facing imminent death and he’d attempted to console me.

Ugh. Bad feeling. I open my eyes in a panic and find he’s crouched beside me, a glass of water and a pill in his hands. He holds it out to me and does a gross little suggestive thing with his eyebrows. Ugh again.

“Fine.”

I don’t know if it’s the right painkiller according to Craig’s carefully plotted medication plan, but it’s gotta do something for my headache and maybe it will come with a miserable side effect that makes Cort less annoying by comparison.

No dice. Within a few minutes I’m calming down and he’s pushing me around and being condescending and chatty I am too tired to do anything about it. He smiles approvingly when I finish my glass of water, like he’s proud or something. I scowl back at him.

“There you go, you little storm cloud on wheels. I promise you can fight me when you’re back on your feet. Or, hey, we can go to that boxing gym you’re obsessed with. I’ll spot you points. I won’t even hit you in your stupid confused head.”

“I swear Craig was there. He was dressed like a dork,” I hear myself say.

“That part tracks,” says Cort.

Somehow, he’s moved us into the bedroom, which is the last place I want to be with Cort nowadays. He leaves me by the bed and goes around closing the curtains.

“He’s supposed to be in New York,” I say. “He’s supposed to be in the seminar right now. Why would he be down on the beach?”

“New York, law seminar, the beach, your bed” says Cort dreamily. “Who’s to say where any of us are these days?”

Cort keeps moving around the room and I can’t follow him, so I just listen to him and let his knack for soothing nonsense wash over me.

“He’s a man of intrigue, our guy Pomeroy. A real enigma. Will he button the top button? Who can say?” Cort flaps open the covers on the bed. “He’s completely unpredictable. Crazy Craig Pomeroy. Which file of paperwork will he study next? Stay tuned for--”

“Do you think he lied to me?”

My head hurts and my leg hurts, and my neck hurts and my arms hurt. My voice sounds pathetic. Not a real proud time for me, but I had to ask. I just need confirmation. Preferably from a source too self-involved to spare my feelings with a lie.

Cort stops what he’s doing and lets the blankets fall where they may.

“No,” he says. It’s a different tone. A cold hard fact and I love Cort for putting it that way. “He would never lie to you.”

And then Cort is all over me and doing the thing where he says “On three” but he means the three that he’s already said, so it’s automatically too late to stop him. And then I’m in bed.

“I don’t understand why he would be down there, but not here,” says a voice that sounds a bit like me but more dazed and pitiful.

“A mystery of epic proportion,” Cort says. “Nap time.”

And he turns out the light.

~~~

Mitch is there when I wake up next, and he is arguing with Cort, which is a sound that I recognize immediately. A sound that really takes me back. Right back to the turquoise and blazing yellow of the headquarters paint job that first year when I met Cort and Mitch, and when Shauni was my everything, and when I crashed into Craig so bad at such a wonky glancing angle that we spent the next few years stunned totally silent with each other.

I let the sound fill my head for a bit and try to remember the glimpses from back then, the moments when the Craig thing broke through and touched my heart and stayed with me. It’s stupid how much I miss him.

Whatever pill Cort gave me has knocked me for a loop, because the light coming through the crack in the drapes is the searing, late afternoon kind. I roll to the edge of the bed and it sends a flare of pain down from the hip of my messed-up leg. Sleeping pill, then, not painkiller. Thanks again for absolutely nothing, Cort.

I feel like throwing up, but I haven’t eaten anything for a while so it’s not happening for me. I pull my wheels over and lever myself up. By the time I’ve hopped into the chair, my captors are in the room.

“You okay, Eddie? We heard you moving around in here. How’s the leg? What can we get for you?”

It’s Mitch. I stare at him. It’s a lot. I miss about ninety percent of what he’s said. A bunch of questions and a worried look, is the gist.

“I just need to…”

I gesture towards the bathroom door, expecting Mitch to retreat and give me privacy. Cort takes the hint and moves for the door to make way, but he’s the only one.

Don’t get me wrong. Mitch is the nicest guy I know. He’s done everything for me. He’s literally saved my life almost as many times as Craig has. But there’s are times I feel like cowering when I’m in a room with the guy. I can’t really explain it, except that it’s the kind of nervous edge I used to get when I was in trouble as a kid.

I mean, it makes sense on a purely spatial level. Mitch is huge and his voice is booming, and his personality fills the place, right to the corners of the ceilings. There are times when it can feel like all the air is squeezed out of the room when he’s around.

Mitch is great and all that, but Craig is the release valve that makes him easier to be around. Craig’s presence is like the beach, expansive and open, and you can just breathe better.

Cort slides between Mitch and I and backs him out of the room. Cort is built a bit like Craig in terms of impressive height and reach, but maybe carries an extra fifteen pounds.

He still looks puny standing against Mitch. And there’s something there, the same irrational way I feel uncomfortable around Mitch on occasion has an irrational counterpart in the way I feel at ease with Cort stepping between.

In the bathroom, I do my thing and dry heave a bit until the nausea passes. I stand on one foot to reach the sink and splash water on my face. In the mirror I catch the ghosts of two black eyes but otherwise my face looks uncharacteristically pale. My eyes are watery and unfocused. My hair is… pretty disgusting. I stop looking at myself. Take a deep slow breath in. The breeze. The waves. The sun. God, I miss the beach.

“Okay?” Mitch asks when I emerge. He’s sitting in Craig’s leather armchair, leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. It’s a big chair and it looks like it suits Mitch’s size, but I miss the sight of gangly scrawny Craig filling in the extra space at his side with law books and the bottle of “work beer” he props up between the cushion and arm.

“Eddie? You okay?”

I nod and head for the sofa before thinking better of it and rolling to the doors to the terrace. At least if I can see some beach, I won’t feel so claustrophobic.

Cort is in the kitchen leaning on the island and overlooking the open living room.

“Okay about the other thing?” he asks. He gestures beyond the glass where the camera still sits on the tripod.

“I’ll feel better when he calls.”

“About that,” starts Mitch. “I was talking to Cort and I think maybe you should take it easy for a while. Rest more. Stay away from the camera, maybe? It sounds like you’re reacting badly to your medication.”

“Thanks for the advice, Doctor Lieutenant Private Lifeguard Investigator.”

But Mitch doesn’t stop.

“Eddie, I dropped Craig off at the airport. I saw his tickets, his luggage. Plus, Gina, right? She would have called if he didn’t show up. You were dreaming. And it’s probably a sign you need to get more rest.”

The greasy smile that comes over Cort’s face brings the headache back worse than before.

“Yeah,” he piles on cheerfully. “And we don’t want a repeat of the wisdom teeth when you totally had a wet dr—”

I kind of scream at him, a little bit. Just to shut him up.

“I told you that in _confidence,”_ I grit out.

Thank god Mitch looks confused at THAT reference. Fucking hell, why I ever thought it was okay to drink cheap post-surf tequila on the beach and swap stories with Cort…

“But I do, uh, suck at medication,” I admit. “It’s why I’d understand if Craig didn’t want to hang around or whatever, except that…”

“Jesus, Kramer, enough with the self-pitying,” Cort cuts me off. “You know him better than that.”

“I had to talk him into leaving. The whole drive to the airport,” Mitch adds. “I practically had to drag him to the gates. He most certainly wanted to hang around with you, Eddie.”

Ugh. _Eddie._ The way Mitch says _my name_ sometimes feels patronizing.

“I’m getting pizza,” Cort announces out of nowhere. “The food Craig left is so bland it’s insulting to your heritage.”

“What heritage would that be?” I ask, genuinely curious about what he has decided is my ethnic background.

Cort walks all the way over to offer a fist bump before answering, bowing his head solemnly.

“The sacred clan of tower nineteen troublemakers.”

He keeps a straight face when he says it, but it’s Mitch who laughs suddenly and uproariously, so much so that I flinch for a second.

“You’ve come a long way, baby,” Mitch says, eardrum shattering voice and one of his long oars for an arm comes swinging around to slap me on the non-cast shoulder.

And Craig has the _audacity_ to complain about _MY_ best friend.


End file.
